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1. It helps to volunteer regularly for a non-profit cause that you believe in, or at least approve of. You likely will get to know some "nice" people; once yo

by dctoedt 14y ago

1. It helps to volunteer regularly for a non-profit cause that you believe in, or at least approve of. You likely will get to know some "nice" people; once you establish that you're actually committed to whatever the cause is, and not just on the prowl, then you can establish lifelong bonds. 2. It also helps to be cheerfully unembarrassed about taking the lead in organizing groups to do stuff. People are often secretly grateful to be able to follow someone else. They'll often reject you. They'll say yes but then flake out on you. You'll feel mortified; you'll be certain that everyone else thinks you're a dork. That's OK; keep at it. (This is good practice for customer development and sales work, come to think of it.) 3. A lot of churches and synagogues have active single-adult programs. I grant you, tech people often don't go for religious dogma. Neither do I. I've been fairly happy in the Episcopal Church (I "married in") for reasons described at http://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse.html http://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse..... Among other things, that post recounts how a priest's citation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in a discussion about my inability to assent to dogma about God, had a real impact on my religious views, such as they are.

Retric 14y ago
1. A lot of people do this stuff purely for the social aspect. 2. Agreed. 3. We have poor intuition about the way the universe works. And not just on the big or small scales. Your average five year old has probably seen black lines when looking at a light source though there nearly touching fingers, but nobody they know can tell them why that happens. However, religions tend to have vary good answers in terms of how people think. And I don't mean that in a bad way, even if they are gibberish they still add a level of comfort that the universe works just like how they think it does. PS: As to thermodynamics sunlight renders most simple arguments meaningless. If you find comfort from the ideas great, just don't look to deeply for there be dragons.
tptacek 14y ago
It's funny that you felt you had to couch the church thing this way. There are more "religious" people on HN than you'd think, but they're mostly closeted. Unlike the real world, where concerns about "a war on Christianity" are entirely hysterical, there is a real intolerance towards it here. Despite incredible advances in connectivity over the last 20 years, I think you'd have a hard time finding thinkers who believe we're less isolated now than we were in, say, 1980. Part of that is economic, but I'm sure a good chunk of it has to do with the role churches used to play in our social lives and don't so much anymore. Fear of isolation and alienation and loss of fellowship might go some way towards explaining why religious people are so jealously defensive of their churches: no matter how deeply they believe, the church probably plays a huge role in their day-to-day life. That's not a religious sentiment, just a statement of (maybe) fact. People used to build barns together too. I am, by the way, a sucker for stuff like this: http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n.html http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n.... More theology from startup people, please! (I'm the worst Catholic on HN; Christmas & Easter, CCD the year of First Communion and, I suppose, Confirmation. Church is not a major part of my social life, at all.)
- cmelbye 14y ago
  According to this unscientific poll, the vast majority of HN readers that answered the poll are non-religious/atheist/agnostic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Absolutely unsurprising, but obviously "atheist" doesn't equate automatically to "antireligious".
    - corin_ 14y ago
      And to add to that, it's possible to be "antireligious" without being rude to people who are religious, without feeling the need to bring it up every time you find out someone is religious and without it meaning you can't be friends with someone who is religious.
    - epo 14y ago
      Depends who you ask, it is always the insecure "religious" people who tend to perceive other people's lack of superstition as threatening, hence antireligious.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        Yeah I've seen that phenomenon, oh, about never on HN.
    - run4yourlives 14y ago
      Exactly. The other important point is that those terms are only "the same thing" to atheists. Non-religious and agnostics don't identify with atheists at all really.
  - m0nastic 14y ago
    I actually think 1/3 of respondents being religious is "more 'religious' people on HN than you'd think" considering the demographic of people here. I think if you asked people familiar with HN to guess what percentage of folks here were religious, you'd get a much lower response (personally, I'd have guessed maybe 10%, which is obviously incorrect).
codehotter 14y ago
Believing in God - not because you think it is true - but because you are lonely and believing allows you to meet people is selling your soul to the devil. When you get to a point where the question of whether somebody starts believing in God or not has very little to do with critical thinking and a lot to do with emotions I become uncomfortable. It's like the people are being taken advantage of. When somebody starts believing because he is lonely, it feels like religion is a virus, taking advantage of a weakness in somebody's critical thinking systems in order to infect their brain. We are not completely rational beings, we don't always need to focus on evidence and occam's razor and strip all spirituality from our life. It's fine to be religious. That is a choice everyone makes for themselves. I believe that, and it still makes me uncomfortable when religion seeks out to lonely people. It feels a little like looking for a soft mark.
- PotatoEngineer 14y ago
  The point is that churches attract people who think they are doing good, and each church attracts local people. So you have a group of people who like being good to other people, are local, and some subset of that also enjoys activities centered on the church. (The rest just show up for services and then go home.) This is a group of local people with a common cause, and that makes a good place to meet friends. If you're already religious, then you can easily go to church, join the activities there, and make friends.
mpdaugherty 14y ago
>> 2. It also helps to be cheerfully unembarrassed about taking the lead in organizing groups to do stuff. People are often secretly grateful to be able to follow someone else. They'll often reject you. They'll say yes but then flake out on you. You'll feel mortified; you'll be certain that everyone else thinks you're a dork. That's OK; keep at it. (This is good practice for customer development and sales work, come to think of it.) This is exceptionally true. I moved from Boston to Beijing a few years ago (and in with my girlfriend at the same time) and essentially had 0 friends for about six months. I'm not naturally very social, so of course, I became extremely depressed. At some point, though, I got through it and realized that I needed to meet more people. I started a "Beijing Coworking" email list for anyone who was working on a startup or freelancing to meet in coffee shops every day. I literally planned out which restaurant I would be in every day for a week every sunday and emailed it out to 100+ people. Only 3-4 people came regularly, but some of them are now among my closest friends. I also learned from one of them how to turn acquaintances into friends. She had an email list of cool people she knew, and would schedule random events a few times a week. She didn't care at all if people came or not. She's since moved away, but now every time I meet someone, I add them to my contacts and invite the whole set of Beijing contacts out whenever I go to a concert or out to eat, etc. People who don't come to anything in the first three months get dropped, but even so, just losing the embarrassment of inviting people means I naturally give them a few more chances to become a friend.

by dctoedt 14y ago

Retric 14y ago

1. A lot of people do this stuff purely for the social aspect. 2. Agreed. 3. We have poor intuition about the way the universe works. And not just on the big or small scales. Your average five year old has probably seen black lines when looking at a light source though there nearly touching fingers, but nobody they know can tell them why that happens. However, religions tend to have vary good answers in terms of how people think. And I don't mean that in a bad way, even if they are gibberish they still add a level of comfort that the universe works just like how they think it does. PS: As to thermodynamics sunlight renders most simple arguments meaningless. If you find comfort from the ideas great, just don't look to deeply for there be dragons.

tptacek 14y ago

It's funny that you felt you had to couch the church thing this way. There are more "religious" people on HN than you'd think, but they're mostly closeted. Unlike the real world, where concerns about "a war on Christianity" are entirely hysterical, there is a real intolerance towards it here. Despite incredible advances in connectivity over the last 20 years, I think you'd have a hard time finding thinkers who believe we're less isolated now than we were in, say, 1980. Part of that is economic, but I'm sure a good chunk of it has to do with the role churches used to play in our social lives and don't so much anymore. Fear of isolation and alienation and loss of fellowship might go some way towards explaining why religious people are so jealously defensive of their churches: no matter how deeply they believe, the church probably plays a huge role in their day-to-day life. That's not a religious sentiment, just a statement of (maybe) fact. People used to build barns together too. I am, by the way, a sucker for stuff like this: http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n.html http://www.questioningchristian.com/2004/11/redacting_the_n.... More theology from startup people, please! (I'm the worst Catholic on HN; Christmas & Easter, CCD the year of First Communion and, I suppose, Confirmation. Church is not a major part of my social life, at all.)

cmelbye 14y ago
According to this unscientific poll, the vast majority of HN readers that answered the poll are non-religious/atheist/agnostic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594
- tptacek 14y ago
  Absolutely unsurprising, but obviously "atheist" doesn't equate automatically to "antireligious".
  - corin_ 14y ago
    And to add to that, it's possible to be "antireligious" without being rude to people who are religious, without feeling the need to bring it up every time you find out someone is religious and without it meaning you can't be friends with someone who is religious.
  - epo 14y ago
    Depends who you ask, it is always the insecure "religious" people who tend to perceive other people's lack of superstition as threatening, hence antireligious.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Yeah I've seen that phenomenon, oh, about never on HN.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    Exactly. The other important point is that those terms are only "the same thing" to atheists. Non-religious and agnostics don't identify with atheists at all really.
- m0nastic 14y ago
  I actually think 1/3 of respondents being religious is "more 'religious' people on HN than you'd think" considering the demographic of people here. I think if you asked people familiar with HN to guess what percentage of folks here were religious, you'd get a much lower response (personally, I'd have guessed maybe 10%, which is obviously incorrect).

codehotter 14y ago

Believing in God - not because you think it is true - but because you are lonely and believing allows you to meet people is selling your soul to the devil. When you get to a point where the question of whether somebody starts believing in God or not has very little to do with critical thinking and a lot to do with emotions I become uncomfortable. It's like the people are being taken advantage of. When somebody starts believing because he is lonely, it feels like religion is a virus, taking advantage of a weakness in somebody's critical thinking systems in order to infect their brain. We are not completely rational beings, we don't always need to focus on evidence and occam's razor and strip all spirituality from our life. It's fine to be religious. That is a choice everyone makes for themselves. I believe that, and it still makes me uncomfortable when religion seeks out to lonely people. It feels a little like looking for a soft mark.

PotatoEngineer 14y ago
The point is that churches attract people who think they are doing good, and each church attracts local people. So you have a group of people who like being good to other people, are local, and some subset of that also enjoys activities centered on the church. (The rest just show up for services and then go home.) This is a group of local people with a common cause, and that makes a good place to meet friends. If you're already religious, then you can easily go to church, join the activities there, and make friends.

mpdaugherty 14y ago

>> 2. It also helps to be cheerfully unembarrassed about taking the lead in organizing groups to do stuff. People are often secretly grateful to be able to follow someone else. They'll often reject you. They'll say yes but then flake out on you. You'll feel mortified; you'll be certain that everyone else thinks you're a dork. That's OK; keep at it. (This is good practice for customer development and sales work, come to think of it.) This is exceptionally true. I moved from Boston to Beijing a few years ago (and in with my girlfriend at the same time) and essentially had 0 friends for about six months. I'm not naturally very social, so of course, I became extremely depressed. At some point, though, I got through it and realized that I needed to meet more people. I started a "Beijing Coworking" email list for anyone who was working on a startup or freelancing to meet in coffee shops every day. I literally planned out which restaurant I would be in every day for a week every sunday and emailed it out to 100+ people. Only 3-4 people came regularly, but some of them are now among my closest friends. I also learned from one of them how to turn acquaintances into friends. She had an email list of cool people she knew, and would schedule random events a few times a week. She didn't care at all if people came or not. She's since moved away, but now every time I meet someone, I add them to my contacts and invite the whole set of Beijing contacts out whenever I go to a concert or out to eat, etc. People who don't come to anything in the first three months get dropped, but even so, just losing the embarrassment of inviting people means I naturally give them a few more chances to become a friend.